Is there a benefit to lending him the 1000 gold, aside from the xp?

Thanks!

He also lowers his sell value and increases his buy value.

Actually there is.

As immediate rewards you have xp, a bit of good karma too.
But later in act 3 (near the start) you get another set of xp (much more) and 10.000 gold if you lent that monnay to the innkeeper.

Now that's what I call a return on investment. Too bad that's probably chump change by then. I'm sitting at 15k in act 1 and I've spent about 10k just on those perma stat pots and 5k on becoming a baron. Good to know tho.

Yes it's not really great money sure.
But so far, it is still the quest which has given me the best money reward.
Even an end of act thing was only in the 7.000
So it's not hard to do really, and even though at that time I had 70k gold on me (I don't really scourge dungeons, have to keep inventory space for arrows and pots), it still made me happy, and it gives a good relationship with the npc giving you back the 10k too, always usefull for answers I think. And you need all the friends you can get in act 3

Oh, don't get me wrong. 10k is still a good amount. I just meant that it might have been more useful earlier on in the story. It's good to get your rep up too. I pissed off the herb lady by siding with the observatory guy in getting the youth elixir. She wouldn't even talk to me. But after giving her the herb book she's now the vendor with the best prices in town for me. I was scared that I might have screwed myself over when I read about her perma potions.

oh yes, I did the same.
didn't think I'd actually be mugging the potion out of her when I asked for it., was going to pay or something.

Not to seem smug or anything though, but someone might want to put the "solution" of this topic's question to the actual good answer... Or people just skipping the read (and you all know everyone does :p ) will get a wrong answer

Yeah, that dialog tree wasn't so much a tree as a linear path. At least I felt railroaded into pissing her off. Usually the trees give you a chance to weight your options.

well, spoilers maybe, but there actually is no dialog trees at all in this game.
You just talk to everyone about everything, refrain from arresting an innocent or two (only found 2 people I could arrest so far which were innocent) and... that's all.
I even had a few times when the game told me to accuse people, I wasn't even suspecting (like lotti the baron's maid)

When you hock something at a pawn shop, you cannot redeem it at the same price you got for it. There is interest on the repayments. In most Pawn Shops, the interest rate on loans is 1% for the first month, and 1.5% for subsequent months. So the longer you take to redeem your pledge (i.e. pay back the loan), the more money you’ll end up paying.
A pawn shop’s interest rate is lower than the average credit card (which is about 2% per month).